A Special Place for Women

by Laura Hankin

  That night, when I’d come home from Raf’s, my mother called me into the kitchen. My teacher had telephoned to express her hope for my brother’s speedy recovery, and my mother had had to explain that not only was my brother not injured, but I didn’t have a brother at all.

  “You’ve got a gift for stories,” my mother had said, interrupting my attempt to bullshit my way out of the new mess I’d created. She sat at the kitchen table, back straight, with her gaze locked on mine. “Your father has that too. And that can be such a superpower, to have an imagination like you do, to have the right words at the tips of your fingers and to be able to say them with conviction. But it can lead you down a dangerous path. You can end up hurting people.” Something had flickered in her eyes then. I’d realized only later that she’d still been talking about my father. She’d leaned forward, taking my hands in hers. “I need you to promise me now that you are only going to use that gift for good.”

  “I promise,” I’d said.

  “Also,” she’d said, shaking her head, “you know you’re not allowed to watch The Breakfast Club yet. Obviously you are grounded.”

  In the years since, I’d done a pretty good job keeping my word to her. But as I watched Libby’s retreating form step into the elevator, her shoulders hunched, her jaunty, ridiculous beret wobbling on her head, I didn’t know if my mother would be proud of what I was doing and who I had become to do it.

  I would have given pretty much anything to ask her.

  THIRTY-SIX

  When we went upstairs—behind the mysterious door, down a hallway to a freight elevator, and then passing through a sort of antechamber with a door opening onto the roof—I was relieved to find that the excitement this time was of a different kind than the plunge-a-knife-into-your-palm variety. Instead, the women were planning a trip, talking among themselves about logistics and supplies. Margot floated over to me, Caroline walking briskly at her side.

  “Clear your schedule for next weekend,” Caroline said.

  My fingers itched to check my calendar, but we’d all put our phones in a bucket in the antechamber. It was where the women normally changed into their robes (although not for this meeting, this was a planning meeting and needed to be briefer. Besides, my robe hadn’t come in yet from the special, high-end store where such robes were apparently made, and they didn’t want to make me feel left out). We dropped our phones and other distracting devices in that antechamber, so that nothing took away from the worship. Then we passed through a door that locked automatically behind us, and we were out under the stars.

  Next weekend. I didn’t think I had any plans. Who would I even have them with, now that Raf didn’t want to see me? Libby certainly wasn’t going to swoop in to invite me to anything either. “Halloween?” I asked. “Are we doing something wild? I should warn you, my thing with costumes tends to be that I think of a pun at the last minute—”

  “Oh, beautiful Jillian,” Margot said. “Who cares about Halloween? It’s Samhain.” She pronounced the word saw-when.

  “What’s Samhain?”

  “The best weekend of the year,” Caroline said.

  “The time when magic is most potent,” Margot continued. “When the moon is full, and the veil between the worlds is thin.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course.”

  “We have a tradition now,” Caroline said. “A trip.”

  “It started when I bought a cabin in the Hudson Valley, deep in the woods, a few years ago,” Margot said offhandedly. “After my big breakup.” Gus, I thought. That controlling, pretentious film director with whom she’d lost herself.

  “We’d reconnected that year, and we went there, just the two of us, for Samhain.”

  “Caroline had told me about her idea to start Nevertheless, so we did some spells for the success of that,” Margot said. She paused and put a hand on Caroline’s arm. “Honestly, us reconnecting, Caroline telling me about what she thought we could do together—it was part of the reason I had the strength to leave that relationship in the first place.”

  Caroline put her hand on top of Margot’s. “We did all the typical post-breakup things at the cabin, of course,” she said. “Wine and chocolate and hexing the ex.” Maybe that was why Gus’s movies hadn’t done well since he and Margot broke up. No, I reminded myself. Coincidence, not real magic.

  Caroline smiled at Margot, and Margot smiled back at her as they reminisced in silence for a moment. It was the most tenderly I’d seen them look at each other. I’d assumed that Caroline was the type of woman to have ten bridesmaids (no, more than assumed—I knew! It had been in the Vogue article about her wedding) but no one to whom she was truly, deeply close. But now, watching her and Margot, Margot who had not even been one of those ten, I saw that I had been wrong. The two of them weren’t just business partners. They cared for each other. They had history, good history, despite the tension I sensed between them.

  “Our magic is so much more powerful once we can get into nature and away from the noise of the city,” Caroline said. “Although obviously we could never live in the country full-time.” She shuddered slightly at the thought.

  “What we do here is nothing compared to what we’ve done out there,” Margot said.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Well, last Samhain was right before the mayoral election,” Margot began.

  “Margot—” Caroline said, a warning note in her voice, the tenderness between them starting to turn prickly again.

  “All right, all right. Let’s just say that, at that point, our preferred candidate was down ten points in the polls, but things turned around for her after that.”

  “You all were responsible for electing Nicole Woo-Martin?” I asked.

  “We don’t want to say responsible,” Caroline said. “We just gave her a nudge.”

  “Well, to call it a ‘nudge’ might be downplaying it,” Margot said.

  “I would love to know what you do to make something like that happen,” I said, but neither of them answered. “I mean, I was so excited about her. It was a shame, how it all played out.”

  “Yes, you have to be careful what you wish for,” Caroline said shortly. “That’s why we’re not doing things like that anymore.” Margot bit her lip. “On that note!” She turned to the rest of the group to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s discuss what we want to accomplish this Samhain.”

  “Yes,” Margot said. “There are a lot of exciting possibilities.”

  “I’ve been chatting with a bunch of you individually about your goals,” Caroline said, “and I’ve drawn up a list of our most promising ideas for the agenda.”

  “The agenda?” Margot said under her breath, her dark eyebrows knitting together.

  “A lot of you mentioned that you were hopeful about your career developments, so I propose that we concentrate this year on doing something that will support our individual successes.”

  “Or,” Margot said, “we could think bigger, start getting back to the original goal—”

  “I think it’s plenty big to focus on things like bestseller status for Iris’s book about body positivity, a promotion for Tara, more national recognition for Women Who Lead, and so forth. What do you all think about that?” The other women all chimed in enthusiastically. But not Margot and Vy. They were staring at each other, and they did not seem pleased at all. Margot opened her mouth to speak, but Caroline cut her off.

  “Great!” Caroline said. “I’ll nail things down further in that direction, then.” She turned back to me and Margot. “And, Jillian, I’ll send you a packing list and all the other necessary details.”

  “Cool, yeah. I can bring some booze. Ceremonial wine maybe?”

  “No, we do not worship under the influence,” Caroline said. “That’s one of our most important rules. It can screw with the magic and make you take risks you shouldn’t. But if you want to br
ing a nice Tempranillo or something for after the circle, that could be lovely.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Caroline glanced at Margot, registering her displeased expression, and said in a low voice, “Stop it. We’ve talked about this. We’re not getting careless again.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to be useless—”

  Caroline ignored Margot and clapped her hands to get the group’s attention. “Now, for tonight, let’s do a spell for a successful and safe Samhain. Shall we prepare?”

  As the other women began to build a fire, Margot turned away. I sidled up to her.

  “You okay?”

  “Mm. Fine.” She shook her head. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask. How are things with Raf? Any . . . movement since the spell?”

  My stomach dropped at the reminder. “Um,” I said. “He did tell me that he loved me.”

  Margot’s face broke into a smile. “Good! I’m so glad.”

  “But then we . . . we had a fight, so we’re taking a bit of time.”

  “Oh no. A fight?”

  “Things are just a little confusing.” I waved my hand through the air. “Let’s not talk about it now. Should we help build this fire or, I don’t know, smudge some sage or something?”

  “I’m going to give you a spell,” Margot said. “To help you gain clarity. It’s helped me in the past.” She proceeded to explain it to me, intently, staring into my eyes, as the wood began to crackle and smoke, and the others arranged themselves in a circle.

  “Thank you,” I said, and then in a lower voice, “But seriously, are you okay?”

  “Imagine you had a direct line to God,” she said, putting a placid look on her face, though her tone was sardonic. “You knew that whatever prayer you sent up would be answered—true equality, say, or an incredible person being elected to lead the country—and you chose to pray that your famous friend’s book would sell. It would be pretty hard to look at yourself in the mirror after that.”

  “Margot?” Caroline asked. “Come on. We’re ready.”

  A look of annoyance passed over Margot’s features. Then she shook it off, took my hand, and we went to join the group.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The next day, I tried the spell that Margot had given me. For research purposes. Although if I happened to gain some clarity along the way thanks to the placebo effect, I would take it.

  First, I grabbed an egg from the refrigerator. I held its cold, speckled shell to my forehead. Focus on the negative, confusing energy inside of you, Margot had said. Let it flow out of you and into the egg.

  Why an egg? I’d asked.

  It represents a fresh start.

  Feeling faintly ridiculous, I rolled the egg down my nose, over my neck, and onto my chest. I rubbed it in three clockwise circles over my heart, thinking about the causes of my inner turmoil.

  Miles’s face appeared in my mind. I’d finally texted him back earlier that afternoon. Sorry, I needed time to digest some things, I wrote. But I have updates for you. His response came immediately, suggesting that we meet up the next day. He could come to my place, he said, which was strange, since he’d previously made it clear that he didn’t think we should have business meetings in my bedroom.

  New apartment now, I’d written, and it’s owned by Margot’s aunt, so it’s probably not the safest. We’d settled on a neutral location instead, one of those rent-by-the-hour meeting rooms in an office building. My heart thumped against the egg’s shell in anticipation.

  No contact from Raf, or from Libby. Not that I actually expected it, but still, every time I glanced at my phone and didn’t see their names, a foolish burst of disappointment rose up inside of me.

  I rubbed the egg back up my body in the opposite direction, and around my head a few more times for good measure. Then I took it out my door, down the elevator, and, cupping it in my hand, jaywalked across Central Park West, narrowly avoiding an overeager taxi. (What a way to go that would be: Police declared it a normal hit-and-run, although they could not understand why the victim was clutching a raw egg.)

  Once I made it into Central Park, I found a secluded spot, a grove of trees slightly off the beaten path. I knelt down in the grass. Then, as dusk began to fall, in one fluid motion, I smashed the egg into the earth. The shell cracked, and golden yolk spurted onto my fingers. I rubbed it off in the grass, then covered the whole mess up with dirt. I sat back on my haunches to find a tourist couple—in matching Phantom of the Opera sweatshirts—staring at me.

  “I’m a performance artist,” I said to them. They blinked, then politely applauded.

  After I’m done with the egg, Margot had said, I take a long bath, and when I emerge, everything seems clearer.

  So I went back into my apartment, lit some candles, and soaked in the tub until the water around me cooled and my fingers pruned, thinking about everything I’d done and everything I had left to do.

  When I finally got out of the bath and wrapped myself in a towel, one new bit of knowledge was crystal clear: I had just wasted a perfectly good egg.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When I arrived at the office space where Miles and I had arranged to meet, he was already there, sitting at the table, leaning back in his chair. He jumped to his feet as I walked in. “Hey, it’s good to see you,” he said. The room was muted, We Work–esque, with a small round table and a whiteboard, plus one piece of mass-produced art meant to liven things up. Within its sterility, Miles seemed extra alive.

  “Good to see you too,” I said. He pulled out a chair for me. He’d shaved his beard off in the week since I’d seen him last.

  “Wow,” I said. “New look. Is your face cold all the time now?”

  “I’m constantly on the edge of contracting hypothermia,” he said, and laughed. Goddammit, I loved his laugh, which he didn’t give out to just anyone. Whenever he laughed with me, I felt like a chosen one, swirling and jittery and high on adrenaline.

  Suddenly, Raf’s face flashed into my mind, the sadness on it when he told me that he needed space from me. I needed space from Miles, who wasn’t available and wasn’t going to be. I had to finish my article and then take some time before working with him again, if I worked with him again ever. Maybe the egg had given me some clarity after all.

  “So, I want to apologize again about the gala—” he began.

  “It’s fine. That’s not important right now,” I said. “These women are not well. They believe that they did things that got Nicole Woo-Martin elected.”

  “Sure. Like, donating to her? Holding fund-raisers?”

  “No, more than that.”

  “What—”

  “And I got into the back room.”

  “Holy shit,” he said. “What’s inside?”

  I’d been thinking and thinking on my way over about the best way to tell him. Now I opened my mouth, but something held me back. I swallowed. “Have they scheduled your performance review yet?”

  He blinked. “Yes, next Thursday. As in, not tomorrow. The first week of November.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, good, so there’s still some time.” I put my hands on the table. “If I tell you everything right now, you’ll think that I’m lying.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “No, I promise you, it’s going to sound like I’m making up some batshit story that’s just going to get you deeper into trouble, and I don’t want that.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “Give me this weekend. They’re taking me away with them. Let me really find out everything I need to know and then figure out how you can see it for yourself. I think that’s the only way this is going to work.”

  “Beckley,” he said.

  “Trust me.”

  “You’ve gotta give me something here—”

  “I need you to trust me.”

  He pa
used. “Okay. I do.” Another beat of silence stretched between us. “It’s not . . . dangerous, is it? You’re taking care of yourself?”

  I shrugged. “Oh, you know, some things might be dubiously legal, but I’m fine.” I waved my hand through the air. He squinted at it, then reached out and clasped it in a fluid motion, bringing my palm close to his face.

  “Wait, what happened?” he asked, pointing at my scar. “This is new.” I pulled my hand back, covering it with my other one, and he leaned forward. “Is this part of it?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s basically a glorified scratch.”

  “You don’t need to put on a front for me,” he said, wrinkling his forehead in concern. “Seriously. I want this story, but more than that, I want to make sure that you’re okay. We threw you into something that turned out to be far more intense than we expected, and if it hurts you somehow . . . I’m not all right with that.”

  “I’m taking care of myself,” I said.

  He bit his lip. “Okay, then.” He sat back. “And listen, I know you said it’s not important, but I think it is—will you tell your friend that I’m sorry for how I was acting at the gala? He seems like a nice guy.”

  “I—” I began. “Um, you might need to tell him yourself. He doesn’t want to see me for a little while.” Miles raised an eyebrow. “We put the fake-dating thing on hold.”

  “He got too invested in it, huh?” Miles asked, and I looked away. “Damn, Beckley, you’re stealthy about it, but you’re a heartbreaker, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “Well, then, just to you: I’m sorry I was being a dick. At the gala, and like five seconds ago.”